


And They Turned Away

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21632038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: Edelgard showed herself to the world, her real self, and all the people she hoped could be her friends turned and walked the other way.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	And They Turned Away

"Well, there they go," Edelgard said. She wondered if 'there they go' was the right phrasing. Was it not she who was 'going'? She was the one who was walking away. Taking the world in her own hands and wrenching it from under their feet, taking it with her as if it were a cape trailing behind. It was stained as red as the path already marked for her, and she couldn't see the end.

She knew that this would happen. She'd always known that this would happen and she'd tried not to get too attached with all that in mind. It still hurt, though, to see the way they turned away in horror. They were afraid of her now. Good. They should be afraid. They should be very afraid, now that they'd chosen to side against their families, away from her. She was going to cut them all down if they dared stand in her way.

If they dared. She looked from the gentle Linhardt to the earnest Caspar. The compassionate Dorothea, honourable Ferdinand. There were so many things that were a pity to think of. These were qualities she could have used, in her army. Her army full of hardened, tired individuals who had just been beaten down until they decided that they could stand this no longer.

They shouldn't have turned against her. They all had so many reasons to stay. Linhardt, pushed into his inheritance by the virtue of a Crest he didn't care for other than academically. Ferdinand, who should be the one standing against his father with everything he had. Petra, who had the weight of a whole people on her back and she was choosing to squander them to a conflict like this? A conflict she had next to no part in?

She supposed that, while she was bitter, she was equally afraid. She was stronger than them, she knew that. But was she stronger than them, and the Golden Deer, and their Professor, and her former classmates? How about the knights who had been in training since birth, in the Kingdom she would now face off against? A coup could not eliminate them in one fell swoop. Could she stand against the force of every one of them and still win?

She didn't know, exactly, but she knew that she had to regardless. Whether she won or lost she could not back down now. She could never back down. It wasn't like she had anyone or anything left to lose other than her life. Her father was ailing, her mother long dead. Her siblings still cried out for help, silently, from their empty graves.

Perhaps she would join them. Perhaps she would not. She didn't know, and at this point she wasn't sure if she was meant to care. If she died, who was left to care for where she was buried? She knew Hubert would lay down his life before he ever let her lose hers. Other than that, who gave a damn as to where she was buried? If she died, it was the end of her dreams. There would be no last hurrah. No world saved from the clutches of the Church. Nothing.

There would be her enemies, lurking in the dark, out of sight but hopefully never out of mind for whoever emerged victorious. But if that victor was the Professor, and Claude, rather than herself, then she didn't know. Claude did not understand the world around him in Fódlan. Claude did not even care, she'd once thought, though how accurate that assumption was remained unclear to her. Sometimes Claude did something that belied that he actually did give a damn about the world. She just didn't know if he cared enough, understood enough.

There was no point worrying about that. No point wondering what would happen if she died. Where she would be buried, who would crow or mourn over her body and for how long, did any of it matter at all? There was no world above where the Goddess dwelled for someone like her. There was no warm embrace, no blessing. In a way, it did not matter what she did in life, at the face of it all. She would die at the end regardless.

But when her thoughts strayed down that dark and twisted path that so many had tread before, blind, she simply had to remember the darkness she had encountered before. That was enough to force the sun to shine again on her thoughts, and she could never let it set.

The sun of her deeds must not go out. She would never allow someone to be left in the dark again like she was, not for as long as she lived. Hopefully not for a long, long time after she died.

So yes, Edelgard watched them all turn their backs and leave her. It was fine. Whether they stood in her way or not, she would secure a brighter future for the whole of Fodlan. Perhaps the whole world. And she would never, ever, allow that light to go out.

Even if she had to watch the light fade, progressively, from Linhardt's eyes every time she saw him. His sadness palpable in every movement. He was the only one she ever saw, now, of her former classmates. He kept his eyes far from her gaze. He, on occasion, pretended he didn't know her. Once or twice, in the silence between two rooms in an event, the moment between two instances in time, the blank look would shed and he would inform her that he now knew that he had never known her. Not for a moment.

But he had, she thought, keeping her sadness as far from her eyes and her voice as she could when she faced him down. He had seen her, when her grades slipped slightly in the week there was a rat sighting in the library. He had seen her when the calamity happened in Remire and her fury was just as strong as any other. He had seen her with her desire to aid the Professor in the revenge they were entitled to claim for their father.

He had seen her, in those times. He really had. He had seen the whole her; maybe not with all the details, all the information she had hidden. But he saw more of her in those little moments than almost anyone in her life. They all had.

She supposed that was why it hurt, more than anything. It was not that she was sad they opposed her views - she was angry that they had. She was disheartened by their foolishness.

She was sad to watch them turn away, sad to leave them behind, because she did so and they did so with the knowledge of who she really was. They had seen the girl locked in the dungeons, fearing she would never see the light again. They had seen the young woman who wanted nothing more than to see people be happy, in the long run.

They saw her, and they turned away. That was what hurt the most.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! :) if you have any thoughts please leave a comment below and if you liked this please consider checking out my twitter @samariumwriting or my other works!!


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